A “presentation program”, as that term is used herein, is a computer software program used to display information in the form of a slideshow. Presentation programs supplement or replace the use of older visual-aid technology, such as pamphlets, handouts, chalkboards, flip charts, posters, overhead transparencies, and slides. When using a presentation program, images, text, movies, and other objects are positioned on individual pages or “slides”. (The “slide” allusion is a reference to the slide projector, a device that has been rendered antiquated by presentation software.) Then the slides are printed or displayed on-screen with advancement or other navigation through the slides being controlled by the presenter. It will be appreciated that a slideshow differs from an animation or video in that the slides of the slideshow typically do not create an optical illusion of motion, as do the frames of an animation or movie.
One of the best known presentation programs is Microsoft PowerPoint, which now includes functionality to add narration or music to a slideshow. See e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,084,582, incorporated herein by reference. Other presentation programs include OpenOffice.org Impress and Apple's Keynote.
A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a system of computers networked together across the Internet that cooperate transparently to optimally deliver content (especially large media content) to end users. CDN nodes are deployed in multiple locations, often over multiple backbones. The number of nodes and servers making up a CDN varies, depending on the architecture, with some CDNs reaching thousands of nodes with tens of thousands of servers.
Optimization might have the goal of reducing bandwidth costs or improving end-user performance or both. When optimizing for end-user performance, the CDN might choose to use nodes that are the fewest hops or fewest number of network seconds away from the requestor, so as to optimize delivery across local networks. When optimizing for bandwidth cost, the CDN might choose to use nodes that are less expensive to serve. These two goals tend to align, since servers that are close to the end user often are located within the same network as the end user.
Web analytics is the study of the behavior of website visitors. In a commercial context, web analytics refers to the use of data collected from a web site to determine which aspects of the website work towards the website's business objectives. Data collected usually includes web-traffic reports. It might also include e-mail response rates, direct-mail campaign data, sales and lead information, user-performance data, or other custom metrics. This data is typically compared against key performance indicators and used to improve a website or marketing campaign's audience response.
There are two main technological approaches to collecting web analytics. The first approach, logfile analysis, reads the logfiles in which the web server records its transactions. The second approach, page tagging, uses JavaScript on a web page to notify a third-party server when the page is rendered by a user's web browser or delivered by a web server.
Initially, website statistics consisted primarily of counting the number of client requests (or hits) made to the web server. This was a reasonable method at the time since each website typically consisted of a single HTML file. However, with the introduction of websites that span multiple HTML files, this count became less useful.
Consequently, new units of measure were introduced to gauge more accurately the amount of human activity on web servers. Two of these were page views and visits (or sessions). A page view is defined as a request made to the web server for a page, as opposed to a graphic. A visit is defined as a sequence of requests from a uniquely identified client that ends after a certain amount of inactivity, usually 30 minutes.
The use of web caches presented a problem for logfile analysis. If a person revisits a page, the second request will often be retrieved from the browser's cache and so no request will be received by the web server. Moreover, it became more difficult to identify unique human visitors to a website, due in part to the emergence of search engine spiders and robots. Therefore, log analyzers added functionality to ignore requests from known spiders and robots and to track visits by HTTP cookies.
Typically, the web analytics service manages the process of assigning an HTTP cookie to the user, which can uniquely identify the user during his/her visit and in subsequent visits. HTTP cookies, sometimes known as web cookies or just cookies, are parcels of text sent by a server to a web browser and then sent back unchanged by the browser each time it accesses that server.
Cookies are used by websites for authenticating, tracking, and maintaining specific information about users, such as site preferences or the contents of an electronic shopping cart. Many websites also use cookies for personalization based on a user's preferences.
Cookies are also used to track users across a website. Third-party cookies allow for tracking across multiple sites. Tracking within a site is typically done with the aim of producing usage statistics, while tracking across sites is typically used by advertising companies to produce anonymous user profiles, which are then used to target advertising based on the profiles.
If a browser includes the plugin for Adobe Flash Player, its Local Shared Objects can be used in a way similar to cookies. Indeed, such Local Shared Objects are sometimes called “Flash cookies”. Local Shared Objects are an attractive alternative to cookies for web developers because: (a) many users have the Adobe Flash Player installed; (b) the default size limit for a Local Shared Object is relatively large (e.g., 100 kb); and (c) the security controls for Local Shared Objects are distinct from the security controls for cookies, so Local Shared Objects may be enabled when cookies are not.
ECMAScript is a scripting programming language, standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification. The language is widely used on the web and is often referred to as JavaScript or JScript, after the two primary dialects of the specification. ActionScript is also a ECMAScript dialect used for the development of websites and software using the Adobe Flash Player platform in the form of SWF (Shockwave Flash) files embedded in web pages. The basic syntax for ActionScript is similar to the C++ programming language.
Progressive download allows users to watch or listen to media as it is being downloaded from a standard web server to their hard drive. This method works best for short-form media where file size is limited. Progressive download ensures high-quality playback regardless of the user's Internet connection speed, although a user with a slower connection will wait longer before media starts to play.
In contrast, real-time streaming delivers media in real time over the Internet, from modem to broadband rates. With the open standard Real-Time Transport Protocol/Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTP/RTSP), no file is ever downloaded to a viewer's hard drive. Media is played, but not stored, by the client software as it is delivered. Real-time streaming is often preferable to progressive download for delivery of long-form video and webcasts of live events.
In a typical incarnation, a banner ad is a rectangular advertisement placed on a website above, below, or on the sides of the website's main content and is linked to the advertiser's own website. In the past, banners ads consisted mostly of text and graphic images, though technologies such as Adobe Flash now allow for the creation of banner ads with text, animated graphics, and sound.
In the context of broadband video commercials, a pre-roll ad is an advertisement that appears before content, where content might include streaming video, animation, or gaming in an interactive environment. A mid-roll ad is an advertisement that appears during the content and a post-roll ad is an advertisement that appears after the content.
A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers. It can apply to a single product, an entire product line, or to an entire company.
The term “white label” identifies a product (or service) where the seller of the product: (a) purchases a fully supported product from another source; (b) applies the seller's own brand and identity to the product; and (c) sells it as the seller's own product. The purchaser assumes the seller is selling its own product.